If You Never Shoot, You'll Never Know
by acaelousqueadcentrum
Summary: Maybe you were wrong. Maybe you were wrong about everything. Little Sam. Always too smart for your own good. Too much of everything bad, and never enough of anything good for anyone to really understand you. To love you. It was okay. It was enough.


Maybe you were wrong. Maybe you were wrong about everything.

Little Sam. Always too smart for your own good.

Too much of everything bad, and never enough of anything good for anyone to really understand you. To love you.

It was okay.

It was enough.

* * *

It was okay when you listened to your dad's breathing slow, and slow, until there was nothing but the faintest sound of a siren off in the distance.

Too late.

Always too late.

That was the last time, you think, you ever let yourself depend on anyone. Trust them. Give yourself over to them completely.

"It's okay, Sameen," he whispered brokenly to you, the drip, drip, drip of gasoline tank just under the sound of his voice, "they'll be here to save us any second now."

Just over 700 seconds–you counted, of course you counted–and you heard his final breath.

The sirens got closer and closer, and then they were right next to the wreckage of the car, blue and red lights bouncing off the pieces of the rearview mirror that shattered and fell all over the asphalt. Men shouted, and you heard the clang of equipment and the heavy thud of boots, and then a face at the window, peeking into the quiet pocket of your vigil.

"Hey," the man said, reaching a big hand past the broken glass to feel your pulse at your throat, "it's going to be okay now. We've got you. You're going to be okay."

But you knew better.

Nothing would ever be okay again.

Maybe it was the loss and the shock, the disappointment and the grief that made you who you are.

Maybe you always would have turned out this way, maybe it was hardwired, encoded into your brain, your very DNA.

Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, it never mattered after that moment, the moment the firefighter with the big hands pulled you out of the car and into the fresh night air, the scent of gasoline and blood still clinging to the inside of your lungs.

You were born in that moment, you were created and set free into a world newer and older than you'd ever imagined.

* * *

You've lived your whole second life undercover. In disguise.

Pretend to be the good little school girl. Play the part, pick another to mimic, fake it until you can escape.

You've lived so many lives in your head that you lose track of them, of yourself.

Until her.

Until the seed that plants itself into your life and takes root. Buries its tendrils into your flesh and refuses to let you go.

* * *

It was worth it, staying. For the first time, maybe, you found people who, if they couldn't understand, at least they could put up with you. With the distance you keep. The masks you wear.

Everyone but her.

Root.

She annoyed you from the start. From the very first. When she held an iron above your skin with a smile, a grin, a look that you recognized every time you bothered to look at yourself in the mirror.

Here was someone who understood.

Who knew that it was easier to stay away. Easier to watch than join, easier to listen than communicate.

She burst into your life and brought with her the water, the sun. She dug and she dug and she grew and she grew. And then, finally, she blossomed under your skin, and you you itched from her petals, from her roots, from her pollen that had sunk into your veins and thickened your blood with the scent of her hair and feel of her warm flesh.

Somehow she uprooted all the parts of yourself that you'd buried and burned. The little girl who died inside that car all those years ago.

Maybe you were just ready.

Maybe it'd been enough time.

Maybe this was all bound to happen anyway, with her or without her.

But you don't think so.

You know otherwise.

It was Root.

It was always Root.

* * *

It had started with Root's interminable flirting. Which had been annoying, always, but not unenjoyable. After all, you could give as good as you got. And did.

Plus, you figured, it was harmless. You'd never falter, you'd never fall.

But over and over again, even when she betrayed you, she became the one person you could always count on. The one person who was always there when you needed her, even if you continued to insist that you didn't.

Even when you knew you did.

It was that, you know, that did it.

The trust. The dependability.

The fact that for the first time since you counted the second of your father's last breath, you knew that there was someone out there in the world who would still say your name after you were gone. Who would miss you–you. Not who you should have been. Not who you could have been. Not even who you would have been.

Just you.

As you were.

As you are.

That's what did it, really.

* * *

You hadn't known.

You'd had no idea.

Not until this moment. Not until this second. Standing before Root in the elevator, already knowing what you were about to do.

You realized it then, at the ache you felt in your chest, the twitch of your fingers at your side.

You'd been long gone before you even known you were going to fall.

It's not love. At least, not the kind of love people go to the movies for. Not the kind that makes the rain seem worth the rainbow, or the flowers worth the time it takes to hoe and plant and feed and weed.

But it's something. Something honest and something true. Something worth acknowledging, worth remembering and being remembered for.

And now, tonight, it's something worth dying for.

No, not something.

She.

She's worth dying for.

In your whole life, you've only ever loved a few things.

Your father, even though he left you, and your mother, because he'd loved her.

Pain and blood and fear. Adrenalin and the way time seems to slow down to a minute crawl when you've got a gun in your hand and a target to shoot at.

It's peaceful, those bits of slow-time you slip into in a fight. It's the clearest your mind has ever been. A place where decisions are only black and white, right and wrong, and the stakes are life and death, nothing in-between.

You're in that place now. That eternal moment, the only place where anything ever seems to matter.

Your wrist burns where her fingers grabbed you, and when as you look into her eyes you understand why, you see the inferno raging there. Everything that is twisting you up inside mirrored there in her eyes, and you realize, she hadn't known either.

Not until now. Not until the possibility of losing became more than probable.

Maybe it had started out as harmless flirting. A joke, an amusement, something to pass the time. But it had grown, for both of you.

Maybe, you realize, maybe she'd needed you to understand just as much as you'd needed her.

Maybe she planted herself in you, but you'd anchored yourself in her.

You shake your head, you roll your eyes, you almost laugh.

You've got the advantage here. You've known for a second or two longer.

And that's why you can do it. That's why you can pull her close and kiss her. Kiss her and mean it, a hello and a goodbye in one moment that will never be long enough. One moment that even short-time can't extend.

You kiss her and you shove her backwards into the elevator, kick the lock.

If you have any regrets as you turn and shove your hand into the large red button, it's that you know she'll watch. She'll watch and blame herself.

You just hope that someday she'll realize that it never could have ended any other way. That this was the best of all your possible endings.

You had a single moment with her.

It's enough.


End file.
